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10/11/2013

Scathing report by Committee to Protect Journalists: Most secretive administration since Nixon

When liberal Democrats start comparing a president to Nixon in anyway you know that you have problems. Personally, after reading this report, it appears that Obama is much worse than Nixon. Can you imagine what the press would have done if Nixon had gone through a reporter's private personal communications or gone to court asserting that they believed normal reporting activities were criminal acts? But that fact that reporters are even comparing Obama to Nixon in anyway is a bit of a start. From the Committee to Protect Journalists:

“There’s no question that sources are looking over their shoulders,” Michael Oreskes, a senior managing editor of The Associated Press, told me months after the government, in an extensive leak investigation, secretly subpoenaed and seized records for telephone lines and switchboards used by more than 100 AP reporters in its Washington bureau and elsewhere. “Sources are more jittery and more standoffish, not just in national security reporting. A lot of skittishness is at the more routine level. The Obama administration has been extremely controlling and extremely resistant to journalistic intervention. There’s a mind-set and approach that holds journalists at a greater distance.”

Washington Post national security reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a member of CPJ’s board of directors, told me that “one of the most pernicious effects is the chilling effect created across government on matters that are less sensitive but certainly in the public interest as a check on government and elected officials. It serves to shield and obscure the business of government from necessary accountability.” . . .

“There is no access to the daily business in the Oval Office, who the president meets with, who he gets advice from,” said ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton, who has been covering presidents since Gerald Ford. She said many of Obama’s important meetings with major figures from outside the administration on issues like health care, immigration, or the economy are not even listed on Obama’s public schedule. . . .